Tardis Tour

Hey! If you're a Whovian, and planning to visit the set of Doctor Who in the next little while, you may want to skip this post because, you know, SPOILERS!

Does everyone else read that word in River Song's voice in your head? I wonder how nice it must be for unWhovians to just read the word spoilers in their own voice. Anyway, on with the show.

It was my birthday the week before last and my darling Dusband decided to take me down to the Doctor Who experience in Cardiff for a treat. He also bought us studio tour tickets as they're not filming again til 1st December, so I've split my post into two, the tardis tour, and then the experience itself and today's the Tardis tour. Or should it be T.A.R.D.I.S. tour. Or should it be the tour of Sexy? (If you just snorted your tea out of your nose, it's fairly likely you're a Whovian)

You start out at the experience building, and then once they've called your name loudly in the group to make sure you're there (and telling the whole building your surname is Hussey), they give you a BBC visitor pass and walk over to the studio, about a 4 minute walk away in the Cardiff Bay BBC studios. They warn you vigorously not to take photos on the way to the studio, but once inside that studio you can go crazy. It's kinda funny really because all you could take photos of on the way is a long, empty, blank corridor...or a peek through into the BBC canteen. I have heard great things of the canteen, so maybe that's the secret?

Anyway, here are the pics of our studio tour.

When you enter the studio, you're immediately confronted with....a plywood shell, the outside of the Tardis set. You gather round on a mish mash of comfy chairs pinched from other productions, all with nicely authentic brown 'prop' hanging labels. They split you into groups of 6 - 8 to go onto the tardis, so while one group goes up into it, the rest of you hang around watching old episodes, taking photos with the couple of Daleks hanging out there, and trying not to laugh at the tour guides fairly pitiful knowledge. Call yourselves fans?!

It's altogether slightly awkward, 20 ish strangers, all hanging around, 2/3 of the time waiting for it to be your turn to go in, with tour guides trying to entertain you. It may have been better if they'd provided an urn and a couple of tea pots, we could have had a cuppa while we waited!

The steps to go up to the Tardis door.

Dus with Ameilia Pond's Dalek. They sport a similar hairstyle.

We did glean one good factoid from the guides of this section, the Dalek for Rose Tyler is much shorter with the Dalek for Amy, because the producers wanted the companions to be able to look them in the 'eye' and Rose was only 5ft 3 compared to Amy's 5ft 8. I'm a midget next to Amelia's Dalek!!

I promise I was happy to be there, just had a lot of strangers watching us take our pics!!

So then we went up to the Tardis doors, and a bunch of strangers watched me have my photo taken in front of the doors before we swapped places and I watched them be photographed. Awkward!

While we were on the platform I noticed the shut off for the studio. Tardis power! Not studio power, Tardis power! Glad they know who's the important one in this studio!

So then we all piled in through the doors, ready to put on our Fezes (Fez's? Fezi?)

There wasn't much of the Tardis we could 'tour', we could just go onto the console platform and around really. I expected the guides to tell us about it as we went on, but he stood around rather awkwardly too while we snapped pics and closed our eyes, pretending we were really companions!

I was more than a little disappointed that our guide called these 'hieroglyphics'. If a man can't recognise the Gallifreyan alphabet, should he even BE in the job, let alone standing on the Tardis?!

Plenty of knobs and whirlers and doodjimajigs for the Doctor to fiddle with.

The guides did say that the 12th Doctor will have this same Tardis console, at least for the first little while, so we'll see. I like this one, it's more classic, less organic, more like the original Tardis consles.

Under the console. No swing that I could see. Maybe it was packed away for fear we'd all be tempted to have a go!

While we were inside the Tardis, someone outside must have blinked because when we came out, looky what we found....

Of course Dus and I thought it would be hilarious to pose with it, pretending it was getting us. Yup, that's right, no one else did, they all just looked at us as we rocked awkward, cos that's what we do!

Look how brilliant we are! Hilarious, right?!

This is my, I'm trying not to laugh hysterically while a bunch of strangers watch me try to pretend like a weeping angel is getting me cos they don't get my kind of cool, face.

Don't be put off by my negativity, I'd go back like a shot and I thought it was well worth the price! If only David Tennant had been there!! (With his English accent, not his Scottish one, that's just not right!)

Love it you cool Whovian - is that British reservation we are seeing? Glad you were able to overcome such strong cultural conditioning ;). Picturing River Song and her sassy way of saying, "Spoilers" is the only way i want to experience that word. In fact the first time ever that i heard it was from River; naturally as far as I am concerned she is the creator of that expression.

Wow! That looks like a fantastic tour. There are still arguments in this family about who the best Dr. Who is. lol Our oldest son sticks by Tom Baker. Our first daughter liked Sylvester McCoy. Second daughter loves David Tennant. (I think he's a sissy). I think Matt Smith was a perfect Doctor. Can such a divided family survive??

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About me

Hi, I'm Samantha, aka Mrs H. I live in the beautiful South Wales valleys with my husband Dus and our unfortunately nicknamed daughter Elvis. I write sewing patterns for bags and love seeing what you create with my designs!